Some of the best ideas come when friends sit down to enjoy an evening together over a curry, and you will struggle to find a better curry than at the Blue Mint in Epsom, UK. Apparently, this particular restaurant is frequented by some of the guitar greats such as Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Johnny Depp (ok, Johnny may not be a guitar great but he is a good blues man and a bloody great actor). Perhaps they frequent there because it is a stone’s throw from the hallowed turf of Jimmy Page’s childhood home? Or more likely it is just because the food is so delicious. Anyway, while four friends tucked into chicken rogans and lentil dhansaks, Martin Taylor came up with the idea about creating an album. This is where the ‘Cracking The Code Vol 1’ album idea was first conceived back in 2019. The rest is history, as they say.

 

Building a guitar is a tricky business. In fact, when it comes to wood working skills, there is little else to compare. Because of the intimate relationship a guitarist has with the ‘tool of his/her trade’, carving, cuts and fits need to be meticulously executed and carried out to a fraction of a millimeter. If the width of the neck is too wide, may cause acramp and have an impact on the players performance. If a piece of flame maple binding does not join correctly, it will look awful when stained and lacquered. If the wood being used is not seasoned in the correct way, it may distort and fracture. And carved archtops are on a whole other dimension. Carving a piece of material with a starting apex of 40mm down to circa 4mm to create the arched back and top, is not only painstaking and physically demanding, it also takes incredible skills to know how to tune that piece of material. By removing just the correct amount of wood in the right places to make it ‘sing’, takes years of practice. But not only do the woodworking skills need to be exceptional, the stain and lacquering process needs to be flawless. Colours and sunbursts need to be just right aesthetically, as does the nitrocellulose lacquer, which can be temperamental in its application and take weeks to cure. Overall, the end result is the guitar not only has to look great, but it has to perform brilliantly, both acoustically and in its playability.

 

But rather than us at Fibonacci Guitars telling you how wonderful our guitars are and how much skill it takes to build them, why not instead just listen? This album, of 14 tracks demonstrates the quality and versatility of our guitars in a ‘real’ recording environment. It just so happens we are fortunate enough that some of the finest guitarists on the planet chose to play a Fibonacci guitar and were more than happy to contribute to the project, and what a wonderful experience it has been.

To witness eight terrific players over the course of three days, walk into the recording studio at their allocated time, lay down their tracks on the first or second take, was simply mind blowing. Just for us to be associated with such incredible talent through our instruments is a privilege.

 

All the guitarists were given a free choice of what they wanted to play, and many of those choices happened right there on the spot. They are all busy, working jazz musicians so it’s really not uncommon for them to play pretty much anything at the drop of a hat. Whilst most of the compositions are therefore from the standard jazz repertoire, there are a couple of originals on here, - Martin Taylor’s ‘The fair haired child’ and Gareth Fowler’s ‘I see’. It was decided that the album would be made without amplifiers, with just a little bit of the DI for ‘body’, in order to showcase the acoustic sound of these beautiful instruments.

 

We would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank Martin Taylor, Alessio Menconi, Nigel Price, Andrea Rinciari, Jason Henson, Giorgio Serci, Alban Claret and Gareth Fowler for helping to make this happen. And a special thanks must go out to Martin Taylor for coming up with such a great idea initially to make the album, and to Nigel Price who has worked tirelessly managing the entire project in his role as the producer, in addition to being one of the recording artists. This album would not exist without their involvement. So seven years after the idea was originally floated, it is with great pleasure that we can now share ‘Cracking The Code’ Vol 1 with you. 

 

In closing, if it isn’t true that the aforementioned guitar greats have ever eaten at the Blue Mint in Epsom UK, I cancategorically state that some of the Jazz guitar greats such as Martin Taylor, Nigel Price, Giorgio Serci and Bireli Lagrene have all enjoyed a curry there.

Enjoy the album!

Graham Esson

CEO FIBONACCI GUITARS Ltd

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Cracking The Code Vol 1 is available in digital download or in CD format by clicking the above album cover.

You can also enjoy 30 second snippets of each track by clicking the Artist image below. 

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